


The Runaways

by squilf



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Nazi Germany, Concentration Camps, Dark, Domestic Violence, First Love, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-05
Updated: 2012-07-05
Packaged: 2020-02-16 03:32:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18683287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squilf/pseuds/squilf
Summary: Charles and Raven are a brother and sister growing up together in Nazi Germany. When their mother is taken away, they are determined to find her, even if that means travelling to a place far away, a place they have only heard vague whispers of – Auschwitz.





	The Runaways

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was originally written as part of the [xmenreversebang](https://xmenreversebang.livejournal.com/8184.html) in 2012. It was inspired by a powerful piece of art by a href="https://gogoleoo.livejournal.com/" rel="nofollow">gogoleoo.
> 
> This fic is written as a kind of fairytale or fable, but it does heavily reference historic events, including the Nazi regime. So there are a lot of dark and sensitive themes.

_Get Out of Here_ by [gogoleoo](https://gogoleoo.livejournal.com/)

  
Once upon a time there lived a brother and a sister who loved each other very much. The boy had thoughtful eyes and a straight line for a mouth and fair hair that he combed neatly with all the seriousness of an eleven year old. The girl had gaps in her teeth and blushing cheeks and wore curling-papers at night to keep her hair in neat rows of ringlets. Their names were Charles and Raven, and they were happy.

They lived in a big house with tall windows smothered by heavy curtains and a black-and-white tiled floor like a chessboard and a piano made with ivory ripped from the tusks of elephants and ebony torn from the hearts of trees. They bought sweets at Herr Sholem’s neat little shop and read fairytales and played with Frau Schmidt’s little boy Adam who smiled but didn’t talk and Herr Hoffmann and his friend who was called Rudy but Herr Hoffmann called _liebling_ tipped their hats when they passed them on the street.

Their father was a starched brown uniform that hid a man inside. There were lots of uniforms, clogging up the streets, stuffing homes, choking the city. Always with their flag, red and white filled with an angry black letter the children knew but didn’t understand.

Their mother was lipstick kisses and bottles of sweet perfume and broken German thick with her English accent. She was forgetful. She kept a spare key under the hedge and she was always losing her handbag and missing appointments. She told Charles to be a gentleman and she told Raven only to marry a man if he treated her like a princess. When the children were young, she gave out smiles freely and called everyone _darling_ , but now she had run out of smiles, out of kind words. Now she had strange pamphlets with the letters _KPD_ punched onto them.

Now there were more uniforms and fewer smiles and no reasons why. Things happened and the children knew but didn’t understand. They didn’t understand the yellow star painted on Herr Sholem’s shop door or the harsh angry voice on the wireless or the bruises on their mother’s arms when she rolled up her sleeves or the look on Herr Hoffmann’s face when he passed them on the street without Rudy by his side or how red Frau Schmidt’s eyes were when she told them that Adam had gone away for a while. Charles and Raven did not understand words like _war_. For them, the world went on, even when it was falling apart around them.

 

* * *

 

Until the night Charles lay awake in bed and heard his mother’s muffled cries from downstairs, part-German, part-English, and his father’s shouts that sounded like that harsh angry voice on the wireless, and tiptoed downstairs. And there was his mother on the kitchen floor, face smeared with blood, and his father, eyes wide and burning with hatred, shouting, “You lying _whore_!”

They came to take her the next day. They were not men but uniforms, their hearts stifled down somewhere inside. They did not see the children cry. They did not hear the mother scream. And she did scream. She cursed the uniforms that held her, called out her children’s names, cried “I love you! I _love_ you!” over and over, until they hit her head, hard, and she stopped screaming. Charles screamed and cried and felt like his head was being flooded with hundreds and hundreds of words, crashing into him like water. Raven collapsed and felt like she didn’t belong in her own body anymore.

And then their mother was gone. Just like Herr Sholem and Rudy and Adam. People were being taken away, and the children didn’t know where to. And for the first time, they felt very, very scared.

Charles’ head hurt. He heard voices pushing their way into his mind. They weren’t speaking to him; they were talking to themselves, telling secrets as if no-one could hear them. And sometimes they were quiet, going about their lives, utterly unknowing that Charles heard all. And sometimes they were loud, screaming into the darkness of their own minds. And it hurt to hear it all but Charles couldn’t shut them out. He thought he was going mad. He heard whispers about his mother in his father’s mind, words that he didn’t understand, words like _Communist_ and _Auschwitz_.

Raven cried for days. She lay in her bed, wretched and angry and scared, and Charles slipped in next to her and whispered, “We’ll be alright,” because he couldn’t think of anything true to say that would make it better. When Raven left her bed, in the muted hours of the morning, she caught sight of her reflection in the looking-glass, and saw that she was not herself. Her eyes were amber, her hair like rusting copper, her skin deep blue and laced with a web of scales. She stared, touched her strange skin, terrified and amazed at once. She buried her head in her hands, screamed silently _, I want to go back_. When she opened her eyes, she was the pale girl she knew. After that, she kept shifting into her strange blue form, as if her body wanted to stay in it. Each time, she pried herself back into her old body, but it was a constant effort.

“Charles,” Raven said one morning, rain pattering outside the window as they lay in her bed, “I need to show you something.”

She wriggled out of bed and shifted, slowly, from her body into a perfect copy of Charles’. Charles smiled. _I’m impressed_ , he said silently, his mind reaching out and brushing against hers.

 

* * *

 

The children were no longer children after that. They were young but they were sharp, no longer truly protected from the fraying world outside. They felt its dangers, its darknesses. They gained faith in their strange abilities, their shared secret. They grew in courage and in defiance. A few days from Charles’ thirteenth birthday, they decided that they were going to run away. They were going to find their mother.

The children travelled for weeks. They snuck onto trains and Raven shifted into different bodies and Charles chased information around the minds of the people they met. They got cold, they got hungry, they got tired. But eventually they reached the place they were searching for, the place Charles heard whispered at the edges of scared minds. Auschwitz. They saw it for what it was. A prison. A place of barbed wire and high fences, of metal and dirt. And somewhere in there, amongst the tangle of grey-faced bodies, was their mother, a pretty bird trapped beneath the hands of a hunter.

It didn’t take long for the uniforms to spot the thin figures at the edge of the camp. They dragged them inside, scared and wriggling like fresh-caught fish, into a cold office. A man sat inside, eyes sharp behind his glasses.  
  
“We found them outside, Shaw,” said a uniform, “We thought they might be part of your division.”  
  
The man – Shaw – looked at them.  
  
“They’re not. I don’t know them. What are you doing here?”  
  
Raven looked to Charles, still held by the uniforms.  
  
“We’re looking for our mother. Her name is Susannah Hummel,” Charles said.  
  
Shaw frowned, a half-smile on his lips.  
  
“Where are you from?”  
  
“Berlin.”  
  
“And you two came all the way from Berlin to find your mother?”  
  
The uniforms snickered. Shaw smiled indulgently.  
  
“What are your names, children?”  
  
“Charles. Charles and Raven Hummel.”  
  
“Unusual names.”  
  
“Our mother is English. Please, we want to see her.”  
  
Shaw’s face flicked into annoyance.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Please,” Charles pleaded.  
  
Shaw got up from his chair, leant down until he was face to face with the children.  
  
“Your mother is gone. You shouldn’t have come looking for her. Don’t come again.”  
  
He turned to the uniforms.  
  
“Put them on a train to Berlin.”  
  
_No!_ Charles screamed, pushing into Shaw’s mind in his anger, _We have to see her._  
  
“Stop,” said Shaw, as the uniforms pulled the children away, “Stop. Put this boy in Block 33. The girl somewhere with the rest. The asocials. She doesn’t talk, she may be weak-minded.”

The children screamed as they were parted, reaching out for each other desperately. Charles’ screams cut into the minds of everyone in the camp. The uniforms shaved him, took his clothes, tattooed a number on his arm. They dumped him in a dark cell, turned the key, metal grating against metal. Charles lay face down, twisted up like something broken, and wept. _I’m alone_ , he cried, _I’m alone_.

“You’re not,” said a voice in the darkness.

Charles bolted upright, shocked.

“You’re not alone.”

A scrawny boy crawled out of a dark corner. His eyes were black, his skin white. His fingers were just skin stretched over bones.

“I heard you,” he said, touching his head, “In here.”

Charles stared at him warily.

“Who are you?”

“Erik. Erik Lensherr.”

“I’m Charles.”

“Charles,” Erik repeated, taking his hand, “I thought I was alone. That there was no-one else like me.”

“What can you do?” Charles asked.

Erik smiled and the bars on the cell window twisted and bent.

That night was cold. The boys slept side by side, but when Erik woke up he found Charles wound up in him, as if he was hiding from the world and Erik could keep him safe. Erik looked down at the younger boy in his arms and felt like his heart had been blown open.

 

* * *

 

Winter came and with it the cold. They huddled close at night, Charles curling up and burying his face in Erik's chest, Erik wrapping his arms around the curve of Charles’ spine. Charles grew thin, his cheeks hollowing, his ribs showing, his stomach empty. Shaw had them brought up to his office, or to his laboratory. He asked questions at best and used his rows of cruel medical instruments at worst.  They never spoke of what he did, just held each other, because there was nothing else to hold onto anymore.

They caught sight of the rows of other prisoners, grey and pale and desperately thin. They were marked with different symbols, signs that the boys knew but didn’t understand. Yellow stars like the one Charles had seen on Herr Sholem’s shop. Black triangles on people who couldn’t walk, or couldn’t speak, people like Adam Schmidt, their cries confused and wordless. Pink triangles on men only. Charles wondered who they were and what they had done for them to all be in prison. They must have all done something very bad.

Charles managed to keep his head above the water, even when the cries of the other prisoners pressed in on his mind and he couldn’t sleep for dreaming of their pain. He missed his mother like an old ache. He missed his sister like a part of himself. He couldn’t really remember his old house, the tall windows, the chessboard floor, the piano. He couldn’t remember what it was to be happy anymore. He couldn’t really remember much. His head was full of other people, of their fear and pain.

Erik grew angry and vicious with the cruelty of it all. But Charles kept him sane. He was something for him to care for, to protect. Something smaller and younger and more vulnerable than himself. Erik loved him simply, fiercely, completely. Charles knew, of course. He heard Erik’s mind, deafening with his love, saying, _I will never let anyone touch you, you are mine, you are no-one else’s_. And Charles had never felt so loved, so _needed_. Erik loved him in a way he knew but didn’t understand, not yet.

 

* * *

 

It had been nearly two years when Erik gripped the back of Charles’ neck, leaned their foreheads together, and said, “I’m going to get out of here.”

Charles shut his eyes, numb with the cold.

“Are you going to leave me?”

“ _Charles_ ,” said Erik, “I could never leave you. I never will.”

“Everyone leaves.”

Erik kissed Charles’ forehead, like a promise.

“I won’t.”

 _I love you, I love you,_ Erik screamed inside his head, like the last words Charles’ mother had said to him. The fierceness of it hit Charles suddenly. He wanted Erik. All of him. Even though he knew he had that already.

 

* * *

 

So Charles ran away again, this time not as a son but as a lover. It was not like the last time. Last time, he had been hopeful, trusting, naïve. Last time, he had believed that the world was good, that people were kind. He was not like that anymore. Now, he was wary and quick and desperate. Now there was Erik. And lovers are dangerous. They planned for weeks, whispered crimes in the secrecy of their cell. They were going to save themselves. They were going to save Charles’ mother and sister. They fled at night. Erik twisted locks, Charles stunned uniforms. But he couldn’t hold them all back. One of them grabbed him, pinning him down on the muddy ground. He screamed when Erik killed him, shot him with his own gun.

“There are more coming,” Erik shouted, pulling Charles to his feet, “We have to leave now!”

Charles wrenched himself away from Erik.

“No!”

“ _Charles_!”

“But Raven – my mother!” Charles cried, practically sobbing.

“You have to come with me!”

“I _can’t_.”

“I’m not leaving you here!”

“You _have_ to!”

“I _can’t_! I love you! I _love_ you!”

Charles froze, lips parting, and Erik grabbed onto his arm and hauled him away. Erik forced the wire fence open, pushed Charles through first, then grabbed his hand and they ran, lungs burning, chased by shouts and the rattle of guns.

They ran into dawn, into the countryside, and collapsed in a field of high corn, breathless and laughing. They lay there, on their backs, chests heaving, breaths heavy. Charles looked sideways at Erik.

“I love you,” he said, throat dry.

Erik rolled over, hands braced either side of Charles’ head, and kissed him, sudden and fierce, like he was dying.

“I love you,” Charles said again, when Erik finally broke away, gulping for air.

Erik said nothing, just kissed him again, hot and violent, biting into his mouth, teeth and tongue. And Charles kissed him back.

 

* * *

 

They walked, and walked. They walked into the countryside, praying that they would not be caught. They were fugitives now. They stole clothes from washing lines, they stole food from farms. Charles liked the country. They were the only souls alive for miles. His mind was quiet for the first time in years. He slept in Erik’s arms and didn’t dream. They got cold, they got hungry, they got tired. But it was the closest to happy they’d been for a very, very long time. They were young and they loved each other. It was really quite simple.

“I think,” Erik said one day, “The village I used to live in isn’t far from here. There’s a man – Herr Braun. He was a friend of my mother’s. He might help us.”

“Alright,” said Charles, and kissed his nose.

Herr Braun lived on a small run-down farm. He was a grey-haired man with a face like crumpled paper and bloodshot eyes.

“Herr Braun,” said Erik, pushing the back door open slowly, “Herr Braun, it’s me.”

The old man stepped closer, leaning on a walking stick, blinking eyes that saw nothing.

“Erik?” he said slowly, “Little Erik Lensherr?”

Erik took the old man’s hand.

“Yes, it’s me. It’s Erik.”

Herr Braun shook his head.

“But they took you – they took you both.”

“I escaped.”

“Your mother?”

“They killed her.”

Herr Braun sighed.

“Oh, my boy.”

He looked up.

“There’s someone else here. Who’s with you?”

Erik took Charles’ hand, pulled him into the house. Herr Braun touched his face, learning it with his hands.

“Is this your girl?” he asked.

Erik laughed.

“This is Charles. He was in the camp with me.”

Herr Braun frowned.

“That’s not a Jewish name.”

“I’m not Jewish,” said Charles, “My mother is English. She named me and my sister.”

“So why were you in the camp?”

“I – I don’t know. Maybe because I’m – different.”

The old man frowned, moved away.

“Oh. I see.”

“Can we stay?” Erik asked, “Just for a while.”

Herr Braun nodded.

“You can. For as long as you need.”

They slept in the barn, the stale hay sticking to their hair.

“My mother was kind to him,” said Erik, looking up at the rafters smothered in cobwebs, “He loved her, for that. His wife died. She used to take care of him. So then my mother did.”

“She must have been very kind,” said Charles.

Erik nodded, said nothing for a moment.

“You know he thinks you’re a homosexual.”

“What?”

“It’s just what you said. That they took you because you’re different.”

“What’s a homosexual?”

Erik half-laughed.

“You really don’t know? It’s a man who loves men.”

Charles frowned.

“But I love you. Doesn’t that mean he’s right?”

Erik pulled Charles closer, kissed him.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t care.”

Charles thought of Herr Hoffmann and Rudy and the men in the camp wearing pink triangles. And finally, he understood.

 

* * *

 

They helped out on the farm. It was hard work but they had to eat somehow and Herr Braun couldn’t do it himself anymore. They ploughed fields and sowed the next year’s harvest and cut down weeds and picked fruit in the late summer, pushing berries into each other’s mouths. They grew stronger with the work and the simple food and the clear air. Their arms were tanned with the sun, their hair grew longer, their faces fuller and red-cheeked. Life was simple and work was hard and love was easy. They washed in the stream and lay in the fields and made love in the barn. Charles was so quick to give, and Erik was hungry to take. And it felt like they were living, truly living, when they had been dying all that time in Auschwitz. They were young and they were alive, and that was more than they needed, that was more than anything.

The pain didn’t go away. Things like that never truly can. It just dulled, became less, like old scars. They still had numbers tattooed on their arms and scars from Shaw’s experiments. They still missed their mothers; Charles still missed his sister. But it didn’t hurt so much anymore. Not now they were free, and news was coming in every day that the Allies were approaching, that the war would be over soon. That the people in the camps would be freed – and maybe Raven and Susannah Hummel would be amongst them. Charles could only hope.

Herr Braun was kind to the boys in a way that he didn’t have to be. He was old and unwell and they did what they could to take care of him. When their second summer at the farm came, he was worse. He was bedridden and rarely awake, and they knew he was going to leave them, because everyone leaves, everyone leaves. They buried him in the churchyard.

“At least now he can be with his wife,” said Charles, throwing dirt onto the rough coffin.

He left the boys everything. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had.

“It’s just us now,” said Erik.

Because everyone else was gone. Everyone else had left.

“That’s enough,” said Charles.

 

* * *

  
  
They cried when the war ended. It meant no more uniforms, no more camps, no more hiding. They could live. Just live. That was all they wanted to do now. They sold the farm. They had been happy there, but they had to leave. They needed the money for the train fare to Berlin.

They went back to where Charles used to live. The street was different. Herr Hoffmann’s house was empty. Herr Sholem’ s shop wasn’t even there anymore. But Frau Schmidt was still there. She screamed when she answered the door and saw Charles.

“Charles! _Gott im Himmel_ , Charles! I thought they took you! I thought you were dead!”

She wrapped Charles in her arms and cried. They stayed at hers for hours, talking in the way only old friends do, telling each other all that had happened in the past few years. They spoke of how Charles’ mother was taken away for Communist activity, how Herr Sholem was taken away for being a Jew, how Herr Hoffmann went away before they could take him too, how Charles’ father killed himself before the Allies came into the city, how Adam and Rudy and Herr Sholem and Raven and Charles’ mother still hadn’t come back.

“Will you stay?” Frau Schmidt asked hopefully, as evening drew in.

“Yes, we’re waiting for my mother and sister to come back,” said Charles, “I suppose my father’s house is empty?”

“It’s your house now,” said Frau Schmidt.

They went to the house. Charles took the spare key out from under the hedge, still there after all this time, and opened the door. He stepped inside, saw the tall windows, the chessboard floor, the piano. All untouched. It was as if he and Raven had never run away, as if his mother was upstairs, as if his father was in his study. But it was empty. Charles didn’t belong there anymore. He wasn’t the boy with thoughtful eyes who used to live there. He was something different, something sharper and sadder. He pressed his hand to the cold glass of the windows and walked across the black and white floor and touched the highest key on the piano. He remembered it all. It was a lifetime ago. Erik stared at it all.

“This – all this is yours?”

“No,” said Charles, “It’s ours.”

 

* * *

  
  
So they waited for Charles’ mother and sister to return. They slept in Charles’ old bed, Charles’ head pillowed on Erik’s chest. Charles had inherited his father’s house and money. He was content, living there with Erik, still young, still hopeful, still endlessly in love, but he longed for his family, a yearning that never truly went away.

They hadn’t been in Berlin for long when Charles turned to Erik and said, “I want to make this place into a school.”

Erik raised his eyebrows.

“Well, it looks like we’re going to be very busy,” he said.

It made a lot of sense. The streets were lined with unwanted children, homeless and motherless and lost. They were orphans or Lebensborn or Jews. Charles had the money and the house. It was too big for just him and Erik. When he was a child, there had been his family and the servants and guests, and the house was always busy, always full. It wasn’t right that it was so empty.

It was a lot of work. The drawing-rooms became classrooms, the bedrooms became dormitories, the library was once again a place where children read fairytales. It was a charity school, and it was supported by the new government of West Berlin. They brought in teachers, they brought in a cook, they brought in exercise books and pencils and chalkboards. The day the school opened, Charles and Erik stood outside, looking up at the school, the place they’d built together.

“There you have it,” said Erik, “Charles Hummel’s School for the ones that got left behind.”

“Xavier,” said Charles.

“What?”

“It’s Charles Xavier. It’s my mother’s maiden name. I don’t want this place have anything to do with my father. He was a Nazi and he beat my mother. I don’t want to have anything to do with him either. I’m my mother’s son, not his.”

Erik nodded and took his arm.

“Lead the way, headmaster.”

It was the forties, it was Germany. They loved each other but they kept it quiet. If anyone went to the top of the house, they would have seen that their rooms were next to each other, with an adjoining door. But no-one did go there.

“Charles,” Erik said one morning, when Charles was still muzzy from sleep, his hair spread out on the pillow, “If things were different, I would ask you to marry me.”

Charles laughed.

“Oh, darling. You do say such ridiculous things.”

Erik frowned so Charles kissed him.

“If things were different, I would say yes,” he said.

The next day Erik bought two plain gold rings, just in case things were different one day.

 

* * *

  
  
Years passed and the school grew and the pupils flourished and Charles and Erik grew to love every one as their own. The teachers, Frau Grey and Herr Summers, were fiercely fond of their pupils, and Frau Schmidt came in to help with the youngest ones, loving them like the child she’d lost. Theirs was a very large, very unruly family now, but Charles still couldn’t give up on his mother and sister. He sent enquiries into Susannah and Raven Hummel, but he couldn’t find anything after Auschwitz. There were so many displaced persons, so many missing, so many dead. They could be anywhere. They could be dead. The same was true of Shaw. Charles and Erik heard that the Nazi leaders were being rounded up and put on trial, but Shaw was not among them. It seemed that in the confusion of the final days of the war, Shaw had escaped, and it was doubtful if he would ever be caught, ever made to pay for what he did. Some things are left undone. Some questions are left unanswered. Sometimes you have to live with that. So Charles and Erik did. They had a good life. They had to be grateful for that.

 

* * *

 

The school had been open for four years when the circus came to town. It was summer, exams were over, and they took the children down to see the show. They held their hands and carried the youngest in their arms and watched a man painted as red as a devil disappear with a flash and a woman in black dance and a man breathe fire and another throw knives. It was late when the show ended, the light fading, and Erik took Charles’ arm and said, “Come on, Charles, let’s go home.”

And Charles was about to take little Alex’s hand and pull him along when a voice behind him said, “Charles?”

He turned around and saw the dancer, a woman who had dark hair and eyes and looked like she came from somewhere hot and exotic.

“I’m sorry, have we met?” asked Charles, “My name is Charles Xavier. But I used to be called Charles Hummel.”

The woman took a breath, bit her lip.

“My name is Mystique,” she said, “But I used to be called Raven Hummel.”

Charles stared at her.

“Raven? Are you really – are you really her?”

She nodded, her dark eyes flashing amber.

“ _Mein Gott_ ,” Charles breathed, and held her tightly, like he would never let her go.

Eventually he pulled away, laughing through his tears.

“Erik,” he said, “This is my sister.”

There was too much to say and think and do. They met Raven’s husband Azazel, the man painted red, and her son, a little boy called Kurt.

“We’d introduce you to ours,” said Erik, as Charles held the baby reverently in his arms, “But there’s quite a few of them.”

That night, they told each other everything. They told Raven about Shaw, about escaping the camp, about Herr Braun, about the house, the school. And Raven told them about the camp’s liberation by Allied soldiers, about travelling to look for work, about joining the circus, about marrying and having a child.

“What about our mother?” Charles asked.

Raven shook her head.

“I found her, in Auschwitz. But she’d been there for years. She was so sick, Charles. She barely even recognised me. We couldn’t have saved her.”

“I feared you were both dead,” said Charles, “I feared I would never know what happened to you.”

Raven smiled and kissed him warmly.

“I’m so glad you found me.”

“Can I ask,” said Raven, much later, when dawn was breaking and she and Charles were alone in the caravan and she had shifted back into her blue form.

“You can,” said Charles, sipping coffee from a chipped mug.

“Erik.”

“What about him?”

“You know what about him. Stop it, Charles, I can see you smirking.”

Charles smiled and warmed his hands with the coffee.

“Yes,” he said.

“So you are.”

“Yes. Not that anyone knows, of course.”

Raven quirked an eyebrow.

“Does he treat you like a princess?”

Charles laughed.

“He says he wants to marry me. He’s been saying it for a while, actually. I really ought to get him to stop. I do quite enjoy it though.”

“Well,” said Raven, “Maybe one day.”

“When I’m old and bald.”

Charles looked down at his mug.

“No, I do adore him,” he said quietly, “And I – I consider him my husband anyway.”

Then he smiled and drained his coffee in one gulp. He didn’t know that Erik was leaning against the side of the caravan, listening, and turning two plain gold rings over in his pocket.

Raven and her family moved on with the circus. But they always came back to Berlin, to talk and eat and stay up late. They came every year, and every year Charles and Raven cried when they saw each other again.

 

* * *

 

And life carried on, as it always had done, as it always will do, no matter what happens. Good things happened and bad things happened, in their turn. Charles became a professor and Frau Grey became Frau Summers. Frau Schmidt died and Raven left her husband. Homosexuality became legal and Charles and Erik didn’t have to hide anymore. They grew old and grey together.

And one day, things were different.

“Charles,” said Erik one morning, taking one of Charles’ wrinkled hands in his own, “Will you marry me?”

Charles laughed.

“You still say such ridiculous things, my dear. Of course I will.”

Erik kissed the top of his bald head, just because it annoyed him.

“It’s been more than fifty years,” said Charles, as Erik pushed his wheelchair into the registry office, “It’s about time really.”

“Oh Charles, you’re so romantic.”

“Shut up, you love me.”

“Why I’ll never know.”

“Look at us. We’re arguing like an old married couple already.”

“Don’t make me leave you at the altar,” said Erik, and took out two plain gold rings from his pocket.

 

* * *

  
  
Once upon a time there lived a man and his husband who loved each other very much. Their names were Charles and Erik, and they were happy.


End file.
